CONTRAS RAID CIVILIAN TARGETS

By STEPHEN KINZER, Special to the New York Times

Published: March 10, 1987

ACOYAPA, Nicaragua, March 8—
When gunfire erupted Wednesday night around the Quisilala cattle cooperative, Dominga Solana, 26 years old and quick, dived for cover.

Miss Solana's arm was shattered by a rifle bullet, but she survived and is hospitalized. Her mother and three others at the cooperative, including a 15-year-old girl, were killed.

''The contras came in shooting, and we had no soldiers to defend us,'' Miss Solana said from her hospital bed. ''They stole cattle and burned our houses.''

The raid at Quisilala, near the town of La Esperanza, 225 miles east of Managua, was the most recent in a continuing series of attacks by United States-backed rebels, known as contras, against civilian targets. A trip through the contested zone indicated that contra units operating here have not significantly changed their tactics despite strong pressure on them to do so.

The contras' human-rights record has cost them important political support in Washington and elsewhere, and some contra leaders have vowed to take action to change patterns of abuse. Contra squad leaders recently trained in the United States were reportedly taught to avoid civilian targets and concentrate on engaging the Sandinista army.

In this part of Nicaragua, the Sandinista Government is widely unpopular. Contra forces arriving here from bases in Honduras hope to build both a military and political base, according to diplomats.

Yet in many towns in and around Chontales Province, residents have vivid stories to tell of atrocities they say have been committed by contra forces in recent months.

''Naturally there are wounded soldiers too, but there is hardly ever a time when we don't have civilian victims here,'' said Dr. Javier Luna, director of the Camilo Ortega Saavedra Hospital in Juigalpa, where Miss Solana is a patient.

In the small farming village of El Nispero, a group of more than a dozen residents waiting for transportation near the main road Sunday told how six of their neighbors were killed in a contra raid Dec. 9.

Speaking separately, several gave nearly identical accounts of the attack. They said that a 9-month-old infant was bayoneted to death and that two elderly women were shot dead after being forced to lie on the dirt floor of their home.

Also killed in the raid were two men cut down as they ran toward their homes and a pregnant woman who, villagers said, was shot in the stomach.

''They took three of our people away with them, and who knows if they are alive or dead,'' a resident, Antonio Diaz, said. ''It was something terrible.'' Officials Use Caution

Not all victims of contra attacks in this area are civilians. Area residents said, for example, that the seven people killed in an attack on the village of Colonia Rio Rama on Feb. 16 were not civilians, as reported in the official Sandinista press, but rather armed and uniformed Sandinista soldiers.

The residents' version was confirmed by foreigners who regularly travel through the area.

Some of the civilians who have been killed by contras in this area in the last few months were Government employees. Off the main roads, officials travel with caution. Some prefer to drive unmarked vehicles.

''Contras maintain themselves here, and they have made this quite a hot area,'' said Marina Orozco, the Sandinista Mayor of Acoyapa.

On Jan. 7, Miss Orozco set off from Acoyapa to the village of Santa Marta accompanied by a doctor, a dentist and two officials of the Agriculture Ministry. They had asked everyone in Santa Marta with medical or dental problems to be ready for treatment that day, and they were also planning to hear demands for land made by several groups of peasants. Caravan Is Ambushed

After arriving in Santa Marta, the officials, as planned, sent the drivers of their three jeeps back to Acoyapa to pick up a cargo of barbed wire. The caravan was ambushed, and all three drivers, one of them a Sandinista soldier, were killed.

A soldier based in Acoyapa, Jose Luis Gomez, confirmed the account, as did an aide to the mayor and two civilians who live in the town.

In the grazing country south of Acoyapa, in the heart of Nicaragua's beef belt, contras have managed to disrupt life on some government cooperatives. Their leaders have argued that since the cooperatives produce food for the government supply system and are normally guarded with Sandinista weapons, attacking them is a legitimate tactic. Two Cooperatives Raided

One area southwest of Acoyapa is now inhabited only by scattered families who farm small private plots and live off the land. Members of three such families told of two attacks on cooperatives.

On Nov. 27, they and other area residents said, raiders struck the San Pancho cooperative 15 miles west of Acoyapa. According to four residents interviewed separately, the attackers burned several houses and kidnapped at least seven residents. The rest fled, and the ranch is now abandoned.

The raid on San Pancho did not scare away the 10 Hurtado Lopez brothers who ran El Chaguite, a well-known cooperative two miles away. In interviews where they are now living in refuge, two of the brothers said they were not suspicious when a census taker visited on Jan. 11 and learned that only four people were at the ranch. Two Women Kidnapped

But the next morning, they said, a band of contras attacked El Chaguite. According to their account, two brothers picked up rifles and tried to resist, but both were shot, one fatally. Two women, relatives of the men, were kidnapped, but both managed to escape 24 hours later when their captors were distracted by a passing Sandinista patrol.

''We were walking the whole time, and they made us carry their equipment,'' said one of the women, Maria Elena Suazo, 17 years old.

The Hurtado family has now abandoned El Chaguite and is gathered in Juigalpa, the capital of Chontales Province.

''If things calm down and the situation is controlled, we'd like to go back,'' said the wounded brother, Noel Gomez Hurtado, 21 years old, who was lying in bed with his right leg in a cast from hip to toe. ''If you don't work, you don't eat.''

Photo of Noel Gomez Hurtado with family, as he recovers from injuries sustained during contra attack on a farming cooperative (NYT/Peter Morgan); Map shows location of Chontales (NYT)